Jerod Mayo's Patriots debut will hinge on a dependable defense and mystery box offense

The Patriots are relying on their defensive holdovers to buoy the NFL's least intimidating offense (non-Panthers division).

The first year of the post-Bill Belichick era in New England will be strange. Not just because of the fact a surefire Hall of Famer won’t be patrolling the Patriots’ sideline after more than two decades.

Jerod Mayo, a seed fallen into the fallow turf of Belichick’s coaching tree, takes over with one of the NFL’s least proven offenses. He’ll turn to either a rookie or a journeyman at quarterback as training camp sorts the difference between Drake Maye and Jacoby Brissett. His veteran wide receivers are two guys capable of big things but most notable, in New England, for landing in Belichick’s dog house. The bruising running back capable of carrying that offense through slumps is coming off his least efficient season as a pro.

There’s a very good chance the Patriots field a bottom three offense in 2024. And that’s OK. Because Mayo and the team’s de facto general manager Eliot Wolf have made it clear they’re comfortable running it back with a powerful, occasionally suffocating, defense.

The 2024 New England defense looks a whole lot like the 2023 version. Kyle Dugger and Christian Barmore signed lucrative extensions. Anfernee Jennings and Josh Uche re-signed as well. There were no major free agent acquisitions. The first rookie drafted on the defensive side of the ball was sixth round cornerback Marcellas Dial.

There’s logic to that. That unit finished last season’s four-win campaign as decidedly “not the problem.” The Patriots defense ranked eighth in the NFL in overall efficiency; it was particularly efficient against the run, allowing a league-low 3.3 yards per carry.

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That passing defense was a problem, but there’s reason to believe it will be significantly better in 2024. Cornerback Christian Gonzalez was on a rookie of the year trajectory before injury ended his debut season after four games. His departure meant more snaps for former undrafted free agent Myles Bryant and the aging husk of J.C. Jackson, neither of whom were very good. Depth at corner remains a glaring concern — especially with a 31-year-old Jonathan Jones primed for a starting role — but the secondary will be better.

It will also have an easier job thanks to Matthew Judon’s return. The prized free agent pickup finished fourth on the team in sacks last fall despite playing only four games before a torn bicep ended his 2024. He has 32 sacks in 38 games as a Patriot and now gets the chance to thrive not only as a chaos engine on the edge but as a cleaner for Barmore’s fully realized pass rushing talent in the middle of the field.

New England hardly made any meaningful additions to its defense, but could still jump from a top 10 unit to the top five this fall. This is enormous because, hooooo buddy, that offense might be unwatchable in stretches.

The good news is third overall pick Drake Maye has the tools to be a special quarterback. Maye is a plus athlete capable of making the throws or escaping pressure in ways Mac Jones failed in his three year audition as Tom Brady’s (…fine, Cam Newton’s) successor. He’s also coming off a season in which he backslid from his 2022 form and didn’t crack the top 30 among FBS quarterbacks when it came to passer rating.

Maye has the capability to make the hard throws look easy and the easy throws look hard. This is going to lead to some big moments on the field, followed by some baffling ones as upgraded defenses force him to process through his reads and make decisions faster than ever before. There’s also no guarantee he’ll play the bulk of 2024 thanks to Brissett’s place on the roster.

Brissett has proven multiple times he’s capable of providing roughly league-average quarterbacking on short notice. Since 2019, 39 quarterbacks have taken at least 1,000 snaps. His 0.096 adjusted expected points added (EPA) per play ranks 23rd, sandwiched between Kyler Murray and Geno Smith. He’s a perfectly cromulent short-term option.

But he’s throwing to a who’s-who of fantasy football waiver wire fodder. The top two wideouts are JuJu Smith-Schuster and Kendrick Bourne, two short-range targets capable of lifting a shaky quarterback but with little sustained success in New England (Bourne, at the very least, was immensely valuable to Mac Jones in 2021 before falling off, whereas Smith-Schuster’s Patriots career, to date, hinges on 260 total receiving yards). The team’s tight ends are a 2019 murderer’s row of Hunter Henry and Austin Hooper (and maybe seventh round rookie Jaheim Bell).

The good news is Rhamondre Stevenson remains to lift the running game. The bad news is his offensive line remains uninspiring; while Stevenson’s yards after contact per carry stayed stable at 2.1 — 12th best in the NFL — his overall yards per carry dropped from 5.0 to 4.0 last fall. His rushing yards over expected (RYOE), an advanced stat that measures how a running back performs vs. how an average back is expected to perform, fell from 118 (ninth best in the NFL) to -18.

The concerns about the blocking up front aren’t limited to the run game. Chukwuma Okofafor is a Pittsburgh Steelers castoff. Mike Onwenu is serviceable on the edge but much more capable on the inside. Caeden Wallace is a third round rookie many analysts expected to be a Day 3 pick. Some combination of those three will be protecting Maye from edge rushers, one season after the team’s quarterbacks were sacked roughly once every 12 dropbacks.

This is all to say we don’t know what the Patriots offense will look like in 2024, but that it will likely be bad. New England buttressed its top 10 defense with a bottom two offense, kept from the basement only by Zach Wilson’s continued crapulence.

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The good news is this sets Drake Maye up for success. If he can be merely below average he’ll improve on the Pats’ 2023 season. The bad news is that doesn’t actually mean anything in the long run. Mac Jones made it to the playoffs and earned a Pro Bowl invitation (heh) as a rookie.

So there’s a very good chance we learn nothing from Jerod Mayo’s first season as head coach other than the fact he can keep a good defense running. You know what? Given the way the last two years have unraveled for the Patriots, that’ll be enough.